A/N: Chap 36 review responses on in my forums.
Like many of you, the situation we're experiencing right now has forced changes in my daily life. I am, and remain, incredibly lucky that my spouse and I are able to work from home. Other's have suffered much more because of loss of hours or jobs entirely, or the illness itself. A part of me cannot help but worry about what the future holds for my family personally, and for the world at large.
There's not a lot I can personally do, but for what little it's worth I can hopefully provide a little free entertainment to occupy those of you stuck at home. That's why, at least for the remainder of this story, I'm going to commit to two postings a week. Starting this week, I will post Saturday mornings and Tuesday evenings. The story has a total of 49 chapters with a short epilogue, so with two chapters a week it should be done posting in six weeks instead of the original scheduled twelve.
I know it's not much, but it's what I have and I offer it freely to anyone who wants to read it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Picking Up the Pieces
With the Force, many things were possible. Taylor could run faster than a speeding car and leap distances that bordered on flight. And, when necessary, she could use the Force to sober herself up.
Unfortunately, what the Force could not do was freshen her breath. When she opened the door for the squat, tired-looking Social Worker and said "Hello!" the woman immediately knew Taylor had been drinking.
Taylor learned this not from the Force, but by the woman exclaiming, "Are you drunk?"
"Not…now." Taylor blinked and smiled. "Come in."
Frowning intensely, the woman stepped through the front doors. "I'll have you know that opening the door under the influence is not going to help your case at all."
"I'm not under the influence," Taylor said.
"I can smell it on your breath."
"I was trying to be supportive for my friend."
The woman looked past Taylor, across the training room, to where Sarah lay passed out on the table. "She's been drinking?"
"Oh yeah, she's completely plastered," Taylor admitted. "You ever hear of Lung? The Dragon of Kyushu?"
"Yes."
"Well, we're both from Brockton Bay. A few months ago he burned her almost to death, ripped out her left eye, and left her permanently scarred. Then she was captured and enslaved by a supervillain named Coil without real treatment for her burns. After I saved her she got Panacea to heal her, but she's had a bad couple of months. So, you know, I let her get drunk and cry it off. I'll heal her tomorrow from her hangover and we'll just move on. So, ah…do you want a tour?"
Taylor had to admit Cheryl Gutierrez kept her cool. Or, she was so overworked and cynical that she just had no more fucks to give. They started the tour of the mostly empty house.
"So, do you have transportation?" Mrs. Gutierrez asked.
"Her car's in the garage. I'm scheduled for an accelerated license program Monday, so I should have a license soon. Then I'll get some wheels."
They walked around the daintily snorting, passed-out thinker.
"Did you build this place yourself? This used to be a church before Leviathan, didn't it?"
"Yeah. I hired an engineer and general contractor to refurbish the place. He brought in a crew and did it on commission over the course of two months. He did a great job, didn't he?"
The Social worker tested the water taps. "You're not on any utilities. Did you dig a well?
"No, I have a vaporator in the steeple that fills a water tank. Everything's gravity fed."
"What's a vaporator?"
"Tinker-tech device that condenses water out of the air. Around here, it's unlimited."
"And electricity?"
"I have a nuclear fusion generator in the basement," Taylor said.
The woman blinked. "I'm serious, young lady. How are you getting power for the house?"
"I have a nuclear fusion generator in the basement," Taylor said again. "Dragon and the PRT reviewed the tech and it's still here, so they mustn't have had a problem with it."
"Sewer?"
"Septic tank. I didn't build it, my contractor did. Leach field and everything."
The tour continued, room by room, until they hit Taylor's bedroom.
"Oh my God," said the woman with no more fucks to give.
"Well, shit," Taylor agreed.
She and Sarah never finished cleaning up, and there was enough alcohol and drugs on display to inebriate and entire political convention.
"I think I've seen enough," Mrs. Gutierrez said.
"Before you go, there's one thing you need to see," Taylor said. "Please."
She led her to the spare bedroom, with the two cots. "This is where Insight and I slept last night. Did they tell you anything about me? About what I was doing yesterday?"
The woman walked around the room, then peeked into the bathroom. "I don't live in a cave, Miss Hebert. You're all over the news. You were released from custody. I'm here to assess your living conditions, and what I saw in that room…"
"Was from a girlfriend I kicked out of the house yesterday," Taylor said. "I just didn't have time to clean the room yet. I spent most of the day at the PRT, and after I was meeting with a new potential Protectorate team. I just haven't had time to clean."
Taylor realized she was begging, but she couldn't help it. The emancipation meant too much. If this woman refused to sign off, then she would be remanded a foster family.
"Miss Hebert, you have to know how this looks."
"I do. But ma'am, the PRT rushed this inspection because Alexandria needs me, and they know I won't cooperate as a prisoner in foster care. Thing is, I just got out. I couldn't have made this mess. I mean…" She stepped into her room and moved trash with her foot. "It's months of filth. I couldn't live like this."
Then inspiration hit.
"Come back next week," she said. "Any day. Insight's furniture should come tomorrow. We'll have all this cleaned up and you'll see how I normally live. Just give me some time to make it my home again, please."
Mrs. Gutierrez pursed her lips in disgust at the mess. "Fine, Monday morning."
Taylor couldn't help but sigh with relief. "Thank you, Ma'am."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"If my power let me, I would totally kiss you right now," Sarah said when Taylor removed her hand from the other girl's forehead.
"The social worker came while you were passed out on my table."
Sarah's eyes bulged out. "Oh, fuck." She jumped to her feet. "I'll call Dan and…"
"I talked my way out of it, mostly. She's coming back Monday morning. If you have to call, call to tell them that we'll be late."
"Yeah, okay. I'll do that."
After a breakfast of sugary cereal, they started cleaning up Taylor's bedroom. Taylor noticed that Sarah didn't get rid of the alcohol, though she was quick enough to destroy the stash of pills, baggies of white powder and crystals they found.
"She did all of that?" Taylor said after running across the fourth stash.
"I'd say this was just what she didn't do," Sarah noted. "Explains all the wrecks she had before she got her provisional license yanked."
They got everything bagged for the fusion generators and the carpet vacuumed with a liberal dose of Arm 'n Hammer for the smell and some judiciously applied carpet cleaner for the various stains. When at last the room was cleaned and the bed mattress flipped and linens washed, Sarah stared intently at the night tables, the dresser and the wide, low chest the TV rested in, all in the white pine that Yuki preferred.
"That's not your color," she said.
Taylor sat on the edge of the bed and shrugged.
"Use your brain muscles. We'll switch—the stuff I bought is all cherry wood, you'll like it more. My rooms gets less light—the lighter colors will work better there."
At Sarah's continuous prodding, Taylor levitated hers and Yuki's bedroom furniture into Lisa's room just in time for the new furniture to arrive. Taylor went down to meet the delivery men, only to see Raul Lopez standing just outside the front door.
"You're back," he said with a smile. Behind him, two other large men waited to bring the furniture in.
"Raul!" She stepped out to hug the man. "It's so good to see you. How's the family?"
"Good, good," he said. Over his shoulder, he told the other two to get started.
Sarah drifted down to supervise the men; she'd slipped her mask on. All of them paused when they saw her.
"Oh, don't worry boys, I'm not the one who can kill you with my mind," she assured them with a sparkling smile.
That didn't seem to reassure them. Still, the two men started getting ready to move in the various items Sarah purchased the day before. Taylor, meanwhile, led Raul into the training room and out of the way.
"Has Maria heard from Yuki?"
The smile faded. "Yeah, heard all about Friday. Cryin' and bawlin' 'n shit. Maria finally told her to grow up and get out. Obsidian says she's gonna be okay, I guess. How 'bout you? Claire said one of her girls saw you in the joint, said you were runnin' the place."
Missy. "Yeah. I made the best of it. Do me a favor, okay? Tell Claire to pass on to Matador that I can't run the clinic. I'm a Ward, and I'm still under Probation. But let 'em know I won't target them if they keep their heads down. I have a feeling I'm going to be working out of town a lot."
"I'll let him know."
"And let your dad know I might have some more business for him. The big, professional kind."
Raul grinned. "Okay. So, who's the new girl? She's cute."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Sunday afternoon, after the new furniture was set up and Sarah had an actual bedroom with a desk for her fancy laptop and monitors, Taylor made her way down into the lab for the first time since she was released.
The house had power, so she knew something had to still be generating the energy. She hoped it was her molecular furnace, but she also knew from the tape across the door that the PRT had been through her lab.
When she walked down into the dusty lab, she was relieved to find her large, primary furnace happily chomping away in power generation mode. Fortunately, Yuki retained enough presence of mind to throw at least some of her trash into the hopper. The machine itself wasn't producing material, which is why it was able to continue running on so little material. It was simply breaking down the trash to power the house, a few molecules at a time. A sheet of paper could have powered the house for a week at that rate. The bags of trash that she and Sarah collected could run the house for a decades on that mode.
Her two other generators were there, the smaller of which had PRT tape and a tag stating Dragon had examined it. Everything else, though, was gone. All of the precious metals and meta materials she had left over from her vaporators and the things she was making for her factory droid was gone. Her computers were gone too, though Taylor doubted even Dragon would make much headway. She'd programmed the computers in Droid binary and Basic. Still, she'd need a new set of computers before she could do much.
A knock brought her mind back to the present. Sarah was walking down the stairs.
"Oh, that is so cool," she said. "Let me guess. A fusion reactor that can reformat matter and print shit out for you?"
"Your power is bullshit, you know that?"
"You'd be amazed how often I hear that. Or say it for that matter. Of course, I might have read Dragon's report. So, switching gears, Armsmaster is up front. Wants to come in and talk to you about your tech."
Taylor stared for a moment, confused. "What?"
"Armsmaster."
"Armsmaster, the Tinker from across the fucking country that tried to kill me after Leviathan?"
Sarah's smile turned a little ragged. "Yeah. And he doesn't look happy to be here."
"Fuck. I don't have my lightsabers! If he attacks me, I'd have to use the Force on him!"
"He's not going to attack," Sarah said. "That much I know."
With a confusing mix of anger and trepidation, Taylor made her way out of her lab with Sarah at her side. They walked through the training room to the original wooden double doors at the front of the building. Opening the doors, Taylor was surprised to find that the man in front of her was not dressed in futuristic armor.
He stood right at six feet. His slacks were bunched at the waist, tightened by a belt but obviously loose on his thin frame. His left arm was gone at the shoulder, the white button-up shirt tactfully folded up no itself. A thin, slightly waisted face might have been handsome once, but looked haggard and drawn now. His beard looked bushy and untrimmed. A pair of square glasses sat slightly crooked on his face under a mop of unkempt auburn hair.
He stood holding three large black laptops in his good arm, and a little leather satchel hanging from his fingers.
"Miss Hebert," he said. His voice sounded rough and scratchy. "My name is Colin Wallace. I believe I have some of your property."
He motioned with his arm. Cautiously, Taylor took the leather pouch first. She sensed no danger from the man. When she opened the pouch, she couldn't help but stare.
"My lightsabers."
"Yes. And your computers. Your local tinker, Energon, collected them after your arrest for evidence and submitted them to Dragon for review. The computers are not damaged."
"I'll take those, Armsy, thanks!" Sarah darted forward to take the three laptops.
The one-armed man winced at the term.
"Thank you, have a good day," Taylor said, hoping he'd take the hint.
He didn't.
"Miss Hebert, I recognize that I…that you…" He floundered a moment before bowing his head. "She wasn't really my friend, Miss Hebert. I hardly knew Miss Militia outside of work. I respected her, and I trusted her, but I couldn't say we were friends. What she was to me was a crutch. And without her, I fell. And instead of blaming myself, I blamed you. I am sorry."
It felt rehearsed. The body movements, the tone. The way he ducked his head. He meant every word, that much Taylor could sense in the Force, but nonetheless, the whole thing felt like a performance.
Beside her, Sarah snorted. "You spent days practicing that, didn't you?"
"Just two," he admitted without blinking an eye. "Dragon reminded me that I did try to kill you after you were unmasked. She rightfully pointed out that you were unlikely to hear me out without a sincere apology. I trust your powers are, between the two of you, sufficient to determine the veracity of my statements?"
"And there's the Armsy we all know and love," Sarah said.
"Why are you here?" Taylor said. She knew her voice sounded cold; she couldn't help it.
"I am here for a friend who needs help that she believes only you can provide her. And she is willing to pay for that help."
"Well come on in, then!" Sarah said before Taylor had a chance to say no.
Taylor sensed her friend's power had intuited something that still escaped her, so she stepped back and let Sarah lead the injured tinker into their home.
Wallace's eyes covered everything at once, quickly assessing the interior space for threats before assuring himself there were none. He followed Sarah around the training floor with Taylor a step behind. She noticed how stiffly the man walked, and realized after a moment that he was in a great deal of pain in his back and left knee.
"Are you here as part of the Protectorate?" Taylor asked on a hunch.
"No," he admitted.
"Medical leave," Sarah said over her shoulder. "With a possible forced retirement from the field."
If anything, he stiffened more. "Medical records are confidential."
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," Sarah lied. "I did my probationary Wards stint with Watchdog. I was part of the evaluation team for you. If it helps, I voted to allow you to remain on partial duty. Your power wasn't hurt, just your body. Taylor's probably already sensed your fucked up knee and spine."
"With bruising to his kidney," Taylor added. "You're probably still peeing blood even six months after the fight."
He said nothing. Lisa led them into the kitchen; she placed the three laptops on the kitchen counter.
"Sit," she said.
Armsmaster stiffly sat. Taylor sank into the seat opposite him and deliberately removed both lightsabers, placing them on the table top. And Sarah…started digging in the fridge.
"Why didn't you get Panacea or Othalla to heal you after Leviathan?" Taylor asked.
From the kitchen, Sarah snorted but didn't say anything.
Wallace actually winced. Visibly, as if slapped.
"I…" He awkwardly cleared his throat. "My actions against you angered New Wave sufficiently that they refused treatment. After Panacea went Rogue, she...also refused to treat me."
"She told you to go fuck yourself with your halberd," Sarah tossed in from the kitchen.
"Yes." It obviously pained him to admit it. "You'd just offered to restore three of their members. They took my actions against you personally."
To Colin Wallace's shock, Sarah stepped back with a plate full of ham and cheese sandwiches.
"You haven't eaten in over a day. Coffee doesn't count. Taylor will be personally offended if you pass out in her house. I'd just laugh at you." She finished the meal with a bag of cheesy corn chips and several bottles of water.
Colin stared at the plate in bewilderment for a long moment. The hand grabbed a sandwich with shook slightly. "Thank you."
He then ate half the tray, quickly and with an almost mindless desperation. Taylor opened her senses more fully and realized just how weak and exhausted the man was; physically and mentally. Sarah opened the bag of chips and he ate them by the handful. Finally, he washed it all down with the bottle of water.
When he was done, she could feel his embarrassment.
"Thank you," he said again
Sarah shrugged and looked at Taylor.
"Watchdog keeps a file on all the best Tinkers," she explained to Taylor, as if he wasn't there. "Those under Protectorate care are all assigned a keeper to ensure they eat and sleep. But Armsmaster here was the head of his team and dismissed his keeper. Miss Militia stepped into that role with his director's blessing, and Dragon helped."
She turned her piercing attention back to Armsmaster. "And that's who you're here for now, right? Dragon? Of course. She's in trouble, and you think…" Sarah's eyes widened. "Holy. Fuck."
"So I don't have to go digging into your thoughts, why don't you just tell me why you're here," Taylor said.
Wallace nodded firmly. "Yes. Last month, I learned that my friend Dragon was…not human."
With that simple statement, everything Taylor knew about Dragon just clicked. The suits. The digital voice. The droid brain in her transport. Her inability to help Taylor.
"Right. Because she's a droid. An artificial sentience."
"You mean Artificial Intelligence?" Sarah asked.
"No, Sentience. Because she's fully sentient, isn't she, Mr. Wallace?"
The tinker nodded. "She is. Moreover, she's a cape. She experienced a trigger event and has a Thinker power related to understanding and replicating Tinker-tech."
"How'd she do with mine?" Taylor asked.
He frowned, but not in anger. "She could not decipher it. Her power did not work on your reactor."
"Because it's not tinker tech," Taylor said. "I understand the mathematics behind it. It's just based on a branch of hyperdimensional physics Earth hasn't discovered yet."
"Like your lightsabers there? They should not have contained beams. I could duplicate everything in them and have a very powerful laser, but not a sword."
She nodded. "So, Dragon's an artificial sentience. She seems to have done good so far. What's the problem?"
"She allowed me to come to Vancouver to examine her…code," he said. He blushed as if he were talking about having wild monkey sex with her instead of just looking at her program. "And I have determined that her original creator installed a kill code in her. And we believe that kill code is in the hands of a mercenary band that has successfully stolen from her in the past."
Sarah whistled. "Shit. The Dragonslayers. If that's true, that means they can see everything she sees; hear everything she hears. Wow."
"Indeed." He looked intently at one of the other bottles before Taylor undid the cap and handed it to him.
"Thank you." He drained it just like he did the first. "Narwhal and the rest of the Guild are looking for the Dragonslayers, but the fact remains that Dragon is arguably the most important cape in the world. She runs and maintains the Birdcage. She handles Endbringer communications and provides transport services. Her company represents almost five percent of the technology sector for the entire Western world. And with the push of a button she can be killed. That's an unacceptable liability to the Protectorate. And to me."
"So what, do you want Taylor to reprogram her or…wait…"
Taylor, though, understood. "She deciphered my laptops."
"Your technology was beyond her, but your laptops were not. She translated the language you were using in two minutes. She would like you to build her what you called a droid brain. And she is prepared to pay you fifty million for it."
The amount staggered Taylor. "Fifty million?"
"Dragontech is a Fortune 500 company," Lisa noted. "She definitely has money, since she does most everything herself. What would a droid brain mean, though?"
"It would make her killable," Taylor said. "The kind of droid brain she would want is a mechanical positronic matrix that mimics a human brain. The one I was playing with had the computational power of most of the laptops in the country combined and then multiplied by a factor of ten. But the sentience is fully contained within the brain. No duplication, no copies. You can back up data, but once she downloaded into it, that would be it. She would be that droid, and a single blast from Legend or even my lightsaber could kill her."
"Fifty million," Wallace repeated. "She understood enough of your notes to know the limitations. The limitations her creator put on her are actually even more restrictive. To put it metaphorically, she wants to be a human woman, with all the limitations that implies."
Taylor tapped the table as she considered. "It's going to take time. I have the theoretical knowledge, but I'm going to have to be producing the material from scratch."
"We both understand." He cleared his throat. "This…Miss Hebert, if this gets out, it would end her. The laws on the books about AIs treat them as Class-S threats. She'd be destroyed just on principle. Please keep this between us."
The table fell into a moment of silence. Taylor could sense his hope that she would offer to heal him. Sarah sensed it as well.
"If you want healing, Armsmaster, you need to contact the PRT and put in a request for me," Taylor said at last. "I'm a probationary Ward, after all. Don't want to violate the terms of my probation."
It was more than she wanted to give, but less than he wanted. It felt fair.
"Yes, you're right. Thank you." He stood, slowly and stiffly. "And thank you both for the meal. And for your time. If you have any questions, contact me directly." He slipped a business card on the table. "I'll see myself out."
Taylor tracked his progress in the Force, wincing despite herself at the sheer amount of physical pain the man was in.
"He refuses pain meds because of the risk of addiction and the effects on his faculties," Lisa said, also staring after him. "Work and Dragon are all he has, and both are under threat. Are you going to heal him?"
"Yeah."
"How much?"
Taylor found herself tapping the table. "I took his lifeline away. I think he's paid enough. Besides, it'll look great to my probation officer and the court when they decide my emancipation status. I guess I better get to work."
A/N: Coming this Tuesday-Taylor's new team loves and hates her super-duper hangover-cure power.